Carolyn of the Corners Part 13

"What is that?" asked the woman, her eyes smiling at the child if her lips did not.

"I know why it is you don't know just how to cuddle little girls and show 'em how much you love 'em. _All_ little children, I mean-not only me."

Aunty Rose looked down at her with unchanging countenance, but Carolyn May looked fearlessly up into the woman's face. No amount of grimness there could trouble the child now. For she knew something else about Aunty Rose. The housekeeper loved her!

"Yes, you didn't have your little babies long enough to learn how to cuddle and snug 'em up. That's it. You ought to learn, Aunty Rose."

"What for?" asked Aunty Rose Kennedy rather sharply.

"Why! so you could take me up into your lap and hug and kiss me-just as my mamma used to do."

"You can't teach an old dog new tricks, I guess, Car'lyn May," said Aunty Rose. "Seems to me too much hugging spoils children."

"Oh, no, indeed!" cried the little girl confidently. "Never! My papa used to snug me up lots. Do you know what he used to call me?"

"No."

"It was just for fun, you know. Just a pet name. Snuggy. He 'most always called me that. 'Cause I liked to be snuggled up."

Aunty Rose made no rejoinder.

The next morning early Carolyn May, with Prince, went over into the churchyard and found the three little stones in a row. She knew they must be the right ones, for there was a bigger stone, with the inscription, "Frank Kennedy, beloved spouse of Rose Kennedy," upon it.

"Spouse" puzzled the little girl at first, but she felt timid about asking Aunty Rose about it.

The names on the three little stones were Emeline, Frank, Jr., and Clarissa. Weeds and tall gra.s.s had begun to sprout about the tombstones in the old churchyard.

Carolyn May pulled the unsightly weeds from about the little, lozenge-shaped stones and about the taller one, and she dug out a mullen plant that grew on one of the graves.

While she was thus engaged, a tall man in black-looking rather "weedy"

himself, if the truth were told-came across the graveyard and stood beside her. He wore a broad band of crepe around his hat and on his arm, and was very grave and serious-looking.

"Who are you, little girl?" he asked, his voice being quite agreeable and his tone kindly.

"I'm Car'lyn May, if you please," she replied, looking up at him frankly.

"Car'lyn May Stagg?" he asked. "You're Mr. Stagg's little girl? I've heard of you."

"Car'lyn May Cameron," she corrected seriously. "I'm only staying with Uncle Joe. He is my guardian, and he had to take me, of course, when my papa and mamma were lost at sea."

"Indeed?" returned the gentleman. "Do you know who I am?"

"I-I think," said Carolyn May doubtfully, "that you must be the undertaker."

For a moment the gentleman looked startled. Then he flushed a little, but his eyes twinkled.

"The undertaker?" he murmured. "Do I look like that?"

"Excuse me, sir," said Carolyn May. "I don't really know you, you know.

Maybe you're _not_ the undertaker."

"No, I am not. Though our undertaker, Mr. Snivvins, is a very good man."

"Yes, sir," said the little girl politely.

"I am the pastor here-your pastor, I hope," he said, putting a kind hand upon her head.

"Oh, I know you now!" said Carolyn May brightly. "You're the man Uncle Joe says is going to get a strangle hold on Satan, now that vacation is over."

The Reverend Afton Driggs looked rather odd again. The shocking frankness of the child came pretty near to flooring him.

"I-ahem! Your uncle compliments me," he said drily. "You don't know that he is ready to do his share, do you?"

"His share?" repeated the puzzled little girl.

"Towards strangling the Evil One," pursued the minister, a wry smile curling the corners of his lips.

"Has he got a share in it, too?" asked Carolyn May.

"I think we all should have," said the minister, looking down at her with returning kindliness in his glance. "Even little girls like you."

Carolyn May looked at him quite seriously.

"Do you s'pose," she asked him confidentially, "that Satan is really wicked enough to trouble little girls?"

It was a startling bit of new philosophy thus suggested, and Mr. Driggs shook his head in grave doubt. But it gave him something to think of all that day; and the first sermon preached in The Corners church that autumn seemed rather different from most of those solid, indigestible discourses that the good man was wont to drone out to his paris.h.i.+oners.

"Dunno but it is worth while to give the parson a vacation," p.r.o.nounced Uncle Joe at the dinner table. "Seems to me, his sermon this morning seemed to have a new snap to it. Mebbe he'll give old Satan a hard rub this winter, after all."

"Joseph Stagg!" said Aunty Rose admonis.h.i.+ngly.

"I think he's a very nice man," said Carolyn May suddenly. "And I kep'

awake most of the time-you see, I heard poor Princey howling for me here, where he was tied up."

"Hum!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Stagg. "Which kept you awake-the dog or the minister?"

"Oh, I like Mr. Driggs very much," the little girl a.s.sured him. "And he's in great 'fliction, too, I am sure. He-he wears crepe on his hat and sleeve."

"Hum, so he does," grunted Mr. Stagg. "He's 'most always in mourning for somebody or something. I tell him his name ought to be Jeremiah instead of 'Sweet Afton,'" which comment was, of course, lost on Carolyn May.

But she said seriously:

"Do you s'pose, Uncle Joe, that he _looks up_ enough? It does just seem to me as though poor Mr. Driggs must always be looking down instead of looking up to see the suns.h.i.+ne and the blue sky and-and the mountains, like my papa said you should."

Uncle Joe was silent. Aunty Rose said, very briskly for her:

"And your papa was right, Car'lyn May. He was a very sensible man, I have no doubt."

"Oh, he was quite a _wonderful_ man," said the little girl with full a.s.surance.

It was on the following morning that school opened. The Corners district school was a red building, with a squatty bell tower and two front doors, standing not far up the road beyond the church. Carolyn May thought it a very odd-looking schoolhouse indeed.